Be Yourself. Everybody Else Has Already Been Copied.
Remember the movie, Working Girl with Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford? There’s a scene where Griffith is semi illegally in her boss’s uptown apartment. She’s trying on her boss’ pricey designer cocktail duds in a scheme to meet potential new business partner, (Harrison Ford).
Then comes the classic line when bestie, Joan Cusack tries to warn Griffith:
“Sometimes I like to dance around my house and sing in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will.”
I’ve thought about that line as friends and colleagues sent me the link to a recent New York Times feature by the legendary Salman Rushdie. Subject line: “Leah! Great minds. Have you seen this?”
The article is called Ask Yourself Which Books You Truly Love.
They were surprised because for 25 years, I’ve been in love with the connection I realized between remembering our first children’s books and designing our powerful business possibilities. And I’ve helped a lot of companies bridge that gap quickly and have subsequent brand success. It’s “like magic” to them but my brand and marketing colleagues couldn’t equate what I was talking about. They just knew it worked. Now, Rushdie was laying out what I was offering in print.
Now people were saying, hey Leah, ‘you really aren’t crazy.’ I got validation. And from the legendary Salman Rushdie, no less. For a moment I danced around. But doesn’t make me Salmon Rushdie. Never will.
Fact is, I’ve never read one of his books. But I did read this article, twice.
Rushdie agrees with me the answer to who we are today is our first stories. The ones we’ve forgotten.
They once tapped into something, as Rushdie wrote “that would nourish them all their lives: their imagination.”
”But they went on growing up and slowly the stories fell away from them and were packed away in the attic and they stopped falling in love..”
If you fall out of love with your natural imagination and it’s hard to create and sustain a business or a book that is authentically you. You may not even know you’re shortchanging your options. Or as a successful client once asked, “can you help me regurgitate what I’ve got in my first book into a new brand?”
It’s so much easier when we stop trying to regurgitate and reinvent who we are. When we trust there’s much more within our purpose and vision. Yes, there may be “nothing new under the sun.” Except for you. And the past 15 months on planet earth.
If ever there was a time to reinvent yourself, this is it.
And I can help you get there. This why I’m here.
Want to talk?
Thank you for reading and sharing. Rushdie and me.